The Skellingcorner

characterandwritinghelp blacksplash

Reactions to tragedy

the-right-writing

In real life, pretty much everybody reacts to tragedy differently. So why is it that every author has their pet reaction to tragedy that all their characters use? Not only is it unrealistic, but it takes away the chance for the characters’ different reactions to reveal things about themselves.

Possible reactions to tragedy (not an exhaustive list):

Distracting oneself with mindless activities
Distracting oneself with others’ humor
Distracting oneself by making jokes
Distracting oneself by reading/watching/playing stories
Distracting oneself with hard mental work
Distracting oneself with hard physical work
Distracting oneself with creative endeavors
Distracting oneself by chatting with friends about normal things
Talking to friends about the tragedy
Talking to authority figures about the tragedy
Talking anonymously with strangers about the tragedy (if possible)
Getting wrapped up in others’ problems
Staying unusually silent
Screaming
Crying loudly
Crying silently
Doing everything possible not to cry
Pacing
Taking unhealthy risks
Going for revenge against whoever one can blame
Punching random objects
Throwing random objects
Lashing out against friends and family members
Trying to prevent a similar tragedy from happening
Eating more than usual
Not eating
Taking mind-altering substances
Getting in unhealthy relationships
Isolating oneself
Obsessing over routine
Numbness combined with apathy
Numbness combined with going through one’s normal motions
Trying to get things back the way they were
Denial
No reaction at first but a reaction hits later in greater force
No reaction at all. Emotions relating to the tragedy just fail to load. Note that this can happen to anybody and does not mark a character as a sociopath.

Characters can have more than one reaction at the same time, one reaction after another, or different reactions to different tragedies.

Source: the-right-writing

long post emotions grief loss sadness

sweetlittlevampire

Alright, the girlfriend is coming to pick me up in about half an hour . we´ll be visiting her dad in Switzerland! I probably won´t be online that much during my stay there, as the wi-fi seems to hate me, so…yeah. I´ll be back on Monday!

Sweet is rambling

poorlydescribedpterrybooks fantasyfeasts

Discworld cookery masterpost

toooldforthisbutstill

New edition ! Recipes from Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook are marked with a *, all the others are creations from talented fans (shout out to @fantasyfeasts, for providing most of these, and @sewuniversebacktogether for attempting to make troll food). Discworld themed food for everyone !

Appetizers, snacks, sandwiches

Nanny Ogg’s Special Nibbles - with special party dip, made specially *
Sheep’s eyes *
Sam Vimes’s BLT
Sausage-inna-bun
Seldom Bucket’s Favourite Snack *
Where’s the Pork?

Main dishes

Pizzas

Bakery and sweets

Dwarf cake *
Dwarfish drop scones *
Drop scones
The Scone of Stone
Dwarf bread
Toffee-Rats on a Stick
Traveller’s Digestives *
Jammy Devils *
Figgins version 1* version 2
Soul Cake Duck cakes
Tupenny upright
Nobby’s Mum’s Distressed Pudding version 1* version 2
All Jolson’s Black Death meringue
Mrs Cake
Ankh-Morpork chocolate bonbons
Death by Chocolate
Chocolate Delight - with special secret sauce *
The Least Favourite Dessert of Verence II, King of Lancre *
Nanny Ogg’s Maids of Honour (nsfw-ish…) *
Strawberry Wobbler (very nsfw-ish) *
Spicy Spotted Dick (no, not nsfw) *
Bananana Soup Surprise (not-as-nsfw-as-it-could-have-been)
Weatherwax Apple Pie
Pteppic’s Djelibeybis *
Klatchian Delight
Honey Ice Cream
May contain Nuts

Troll food !

Troll drink (I need a name for this one !)
Sweet Stones
Lumps of Coal (this one is not supposed to be Discworld related, but come on !)

Don’t forget the drinks ! Check Discworld Drinks :

toooldforthisbutstill

Update of the year, with something like a dozen new recipes !, provided by the amazing @fantasyfeasts. Happy Hogswatch everyone !

fantasyfeasts

I’m so honored! Thank you so much!

Source: toooldforthisbutstill

discworld food cw other

fandonetrash muzmuzme

Anonymous asked:

Wouldnt asexuality be kind of a mental disorder because it doesnt benefit human evolution? Just biologically speaking, reproduction is essential for any species to keep evolving

preoccupiedpepper answered:

I am not sure what post this question is in response to, but thanks for the opportunity to actually put my expensive education to use.

Lets start by talking about what “mental illness” means.

A mental illness is a condition that affects a person’s thinking, feeling or mood. Such conditions may affect someone’s ability to relate to others and function each day.

- National Alliance on Mental Illness

Mental illnesses are health conditions involving changes in thinking, emotion or behavior (or a combination of these). Mental illnesses are associated with distress and/or problems functioning in social, work or family activities.

- American Psychiatric Association

What do these two definitions have in common?

1) They explain that mental illness involves thinking, emotion, and behavior.

2) They explain that mental illnesses affect a person’s ability to function.

You’ll notice that neither of these definitions include any mention of evolution or reproduction. That’s because procreation and contributing beneficially to evolution is not a requirement of mental health.

A lot of people make the mistake of viewing mental health in terms of “normal” vs “abnormal”. I think that plays a lot into this unfortunately common idea that behaviors that aren’t biologically beneficial are “abnormal” and thus evidence of mental illness.

The truth is that mental illness is about functioning vs impairment.

The cornerstone of every psychiatric diagnosis is that it causes impairment in at least one are of a person’s life. The areas that mental health professionals usually look at are social, work, and leisure.

Now, back in the old days psychologists used to have different ideas about what “functioning” looked like. If you didn’t fit in with the strict social norms of the time, then they would argue that you were experiencing impairment in social or work life. For example, a woman who wanted to work instead of getting married and having children might be labeled as mentally ill because her desires were “impairing” her from fitting into society’s prescribed gender roles.

Thankfully we have (for the most part) moved on from that!

Now we look at functioning and impairment in terms of how well a person can live an enjoyable, fulfilling life. Some professionals also throw the idea of “productivity” into the mix, but that is very much a productive of America’s obsession with capitalism and that is a completely different rant!

Pick any mental illness out of a hat and I can tell you how the symptoms of that mental illness are likely to cause impairment in a person’s life. I can’t do that with asexuality, because asexuality does not have “symptoms” that impair a person’s functioning.

Like all marginalized sexual orientations and gender alignments, Asexuality does not inherently cause any distress or impairment. Any distress or impairment that asexual people experience is a result of society’s reaction to who they are.

Being asexual might (notice I say “might” not “does”) stop someone from having romantic relationships or from having children, but romantic relationships and children are not requirements for functioning and mental health.

You can have a rich and fulfilling social life without ever having a romantic relationship.

You can have a full, healthy, functional life without experiencing any sexual attraction.

Sex is not a requirement for life.

Sex is not a requirement for health.

Asexuality is not a mental illness because it does not cause impairment or distress.

Evolution, natural selection, and procreation have absolutely nothing to do with defining and diagnosing mental illnesses.

amolecularmachine

I mean if we wanted to go down the road of “anything that does not directly contribute to the propagation and advancement of the species is a mental illness” then I’m pretty sure we would also have to include:

sex between people of the same biological sex
sex between one or more people incapable of reproduction for whatever reason (post menopause, sterility, etc)
sex between one or more people utilizing some form of birth control
sex being performed for basically any other reason than reproduction
a pregnant person undergoing an abortion
a person willfully making themselves unable to reproduce (vasectomy, tying tubes, etc)
any measure to extend the life and health of someone who would be unlikely or completely incapable of surviving without outside aid
any measure to extend the life and health of someone who is incapable of reproducing
any measure to extend the life and health of someone who has a significant health risk that can be passed on genetically
a person willfully undergoing any experience with a potential for personal harm or death without any corresponding ‘gain’ in creating or sustaining more lives (sports, daredevil activities, etc)
capitalism
the production of art and entertainment
political or social activities that lead to individuals who are not the most genetically fit for their environment being placed in positions of higher importance, protection, access to medical care, etc
using tumblr

but yeah, in conclusion, I am definitely holding back human evolution purely out of spite, muwahahaha

mikkeneko

This is nearly word-for-word a popular homophobic argument against gay people, btw, in case anyone didn’t recognize it; which makes it hard to take OP as anything other than a troll, but I’ll keep going anyway since hey, other people might learn stuff.

So…

People at large have an extremely skewed idea of what evolutionary imperatives actually are (see the ’strongest’ vs ‘best fit for environment’ confusion) at the heart of it, and even less so what constitutes a successful evolutionary strategy. You really have to stop and take a look at your understanding of popular scientific concepts to make sure they aren’t just thin blankets of “science says” thrown over common unexamined schema of how you think the world ought to work.

So point one: Evolution doesn’t design, intend, or enforce anything. It is not an active winnowing and progressing force. Literally the ONLY question that evolution poses is “is whatever you’re doing working well enough for your species to continue functioning in this environment?” Nothing else. So to start off with, the fact that the human race is doing just fine regardless of whether specific individual members aren’t doing the do means that, as a species, we’re as evolutionarily adapted as we need to be and the presence of gay or asexual people in the population is not hurting us.

Point two: Evolution is a species-level pressure, not an individual one. Evolution doesn’t care whether any given individual passes on their genes. Only that the larger population does.

And because of that, you can have all SORTS of evolutionarily successful strategies that don’t involve every member of the species directly generating more offspring. You can get evolutionarily successful strategies that look pretty fucking wild from our basic, male-and-female-combine-to-make-offspring model. You get gay male penguins and gay male swans stealing non-blood-related eggs from females to raise together and the females are just fine with this because now they can go live a swan bachelorette lifestyle without the unbelievable drain of having to raise their kids on top of the already-considerable biological drain of gestating them. You have species with three different subtypes of males and two of females that interact in byzantinely complex substructures of who fucks who and who has the babies and who raises them. You have hermaphroditic species that literally have dueling cock battles over who gets away with not being pregnant. You have species that will lay their eggs in the nests of other species to get out of child-rearing and species that will deliberately bring in individuals of other species to act as nannies.

Both child-bearing and child-rearing are incredibly resource draining activities, in nature as in here. Some species have adopted the ‘zerg rush’ method and it works well for them – spiders or fish who lay hundreds or thousands of eggs at once in hopes that at least a few of them will make it but devote essentially no resources to childrearing beyond that – but as a general rule, the more complex lifeforms get and the longer it takes to raise a baby from infancy to self-sufficiency, the greater the amount of labor and resource investment. Humans are way on the far extreme end of that particular scale. There is far more involved in human reproduction than merely just producing the babies.

So imagine you have a species of bird who raise several generations of eggs in one nest. The first egg to hatch gets designated the “babysitter,” and instead of leaving the nest once it reaches adulthood, sticks around to help its parents raise its younger siblings instead. With more bodies to collect food and defend the nest against predators, the rest of the young have a better chance of getting enough food and surviving to adulthood without getting eaten. Even if the babysitter bird never has any eggs of its own, it has still contributed materially to the advancement of its genetic line, since each of its siblings shares the same component of genes (50%) as any child of its own would.

That is just one, hypothetical model to show how homosexual and asexual individuals in a disexual species would nevertheless act as part of a successful reproductive strategy. For a less-hypothetical model, simply look around you. The more complex the society, and the more complex the requirements to raise an individual offspring to adulthood, the more complex and vital these indirect contributions become. We all work to create an environment where children survive and flourish, where they don’t risk being eaten by bears or starving through a hard winter. (Sometimes one can doubt whether we succeed in that aim, but… well, we’re at least trying.)

We are, asexuals and homosexuals and allosexuals alike, all equal contributors to the survival and perpetuation of our species, even if we never directly touch a baby in our lives. Anyone who says otherwise is a fool, or a malicious liar.

Source: preoccupiedpepper

fanfoolishness

Cullen Rutherford: an internal monologue

Wow the Inquisitor seems to really like me this is nice

It’s so pleasant to work with someone this charming

Oh, she’s still smiling at me –

Is… she… flirting with me? Maker’s breath what do I do now this is awkward think Cullen think

*clears throat*

cullen rutherford cullen flycam dragon age: inquisition cullen is a giant dork commander cullen look at his goobery little face

fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment contentmint

smartstudy

Hey guys. I’m glad to be finally posting my “mental breakdown survival guide”. As you know I struggle a lot with mental health, and so I have been through a lot of breakdowns. So many that I actually dropped out of university after 3 weeks in 2016 and had to take the whole year off. Because of this, I’ve made it my mission to help others with mental health issues as much as I can, so you don’t have to go through what I’ve been through.

Anyway, here is my guide. I tried to keep it general, and actually useful. If you have any questions or additions please feel free to add them.

And as ever, if you want to talk to me about studying with mental illness or want to see a post on a specific topic, please feel free to message me.